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Comment by nickmyersdt | Hacker News Reader

Really?

I'm a developer who has gone into management.

Most of the software that is churned out just keeps the money flowing.

Garbage collectors, nurses, utility workers, teachers, parents.

All seem infinitely more valuable to humanity then anything developers do, unless you're advancing medical or bio-science.

Admittedly, due to demand and the ever increasing globalisation of systems software is exploding, so developers are in demand.

Most valuable type of person (I despise the word resource applied to people) I guess depends on your definition of what is valuable?

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I completely agree that all the occupations you listed, are way more important, especially parents. I'm a little on the fence on teachers now, because I feel too many are teaching from an agenda playbook, rather than to make our little ones actually smarter. But, the point you made, is exactly the point. We as a society are trying to build something more, whether that is get to Mars, have autonomous cars, or even have social media that is able to completely control us. I agree, calling people resources, or talking strictly about butts in seats is what people that are attempting to be soulless do. But everyone that is "powerful" today needs developers way more than they care to admit. It is amazing to me how many people I know wish they could be developers, like have actually said those words to me. Mind you, these are people that want to be more successful, and thus need to "build" things at scale, and are thus reliant on developers. And having to pay someone 200K or 300K or 400K to do something they could do if they just had the time (or at least they think that) drives them mad.

I agree on the teacher point. There are some teachers that really care about unleashing genius, creativity and curiosity. There are some that just want the paycheck each month. And a scale in between. I question the "system" and whether it's measuring (or able to measure) the 'right' things? As most of the behaviour from teachers and education leadership is based around attainment. Likely that putting a bunch of people in a cohort and trying to help them grow into curious, motivated individuals can't be done on a large group basis.

Largely, I think economics drives most systems, and the behaviour within those systems. It requires people to think and act beyond those boundaries for humanity to move forward.

If there were no developers, or no software, or no Internet, I wonder what humanity would look like right now.

When I start to think about it lot of the less sexy work seems lot more beneficial for humanity than what the "tech" companies produce.

Not that there isn't some benefits, but compare most of social media, advertising and many platforms to automation, industry and so on. Global logistics is big thing too improving quality of life massively, even if consumption might be somewhat negative for planet.

Yeah, I think there are too many industries that take more than they give, however they prey on human weaknesses. The global logistics thing is interesting as arguably globalisation is the leading cause of destruction to planet Earth.

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